Analysis Of A Long Way Gone By Ishmael Beah

There are many reasons English teachers should select material to teach important concepts. English is a much more loosely structured class than Calculus or Physics, so there is a great deal of controversy when choosing books for students. While some titles can hold topics that resemble taboos, the experiences of the protagonists in stories of violence, poverty, and extreme struggle can encourage growth of students as learners, thinkers, and human beings. Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone is appropriate for the Sterling High School English IV curriculum because it contains honest and detailed imagery, and because it sparks a reader’s awareness of tragedies that are being forced upon their peers across the globe.
Bluntly said, Beah’s

A theme of loneliness and isolation is heavily present throughout A Long Way Gone, which speaks a truth: war is full of internal conflict. While a great deal of war is violence and comradery, many times the beings that are directly impacted by the issue experience unbearable silence. This lack of sound can both mean complete death of surroundings, or not having a means to have a voice. “The silence in the village was too scary…not even a lizard dared to crawl through the village. I could hear my heartbeat louder than my footsteps” (46). Throughout his experience in the civil war of Sierra Leone, Beah was alone. He emphasizes intensity in silence to communicate a feeling of abandonment and a lack of mental, physical, and emotional support. Students must think critically to completely interpret the author’s literal and metaphorical use of imagery. Likewise, Beah spends a large portion of his struggle in the African Jungle. He uses the forest as imagery and as a metaphor for his mental state. Beah recalls, “The more I walked, the more it seemed I was getting deeper

Although Sterling, Illinois contains poverty and some struggle to provide for one self, the difficulties faced by children and teens in Sterling’s community rarely stoop to the experiences of Ishmael Beah. Beah illustrates throughout his memoir, many situations where he and his friends struggle for food, water, shelter, and basic safety needs. Students in Sterling High School should be aware of these very real lifestyles that teens across the globe live through every day. In one situation, Beah tells, “Two people came out, a woman and a young child. They were on fire…the woman fell and stopped moving. The child gave a loud screech and sat next to a tree. He stopped moving” (94). Being a witness to pure terror, violence, and suffering is not something residents of Sterling, Illinois experience often; when they do it is not on the same level as other parts of the world. Beah remembers this because it traumatized him, and it reminds readers of how fortunate citizens of the United States really are. Naivety is a major weakness of fortunate people, and being blind to the horrors surrounding them is ignorance. Ignorance by definition is a lacking of knowledge or information, and by continuing to teach A Long Way Gone, Sterling High School will gain awareness and truth to how the world really behaves outside of the land of liberty and the red, white,